SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

EDITOR'S NOTE

In the days of Shakyamini Buddha, during the rainy season, Buddha would stop his meandering and spend time with his monks and nuns in one locale. In Japanese this period is called Ango, a period in space and time of peace. In English we use the word retreat to often mean “getting away from the issues of the world.” A Bearing Witness Retreat is becoming one with the “issues of the world.” A Zen Meditation Retreat is to bear witness to the wholeness of life. —Bernie Glassman Roshi

In this issue we celebrate the engaged Buddhist work happening in the Zen Peacemakers stream, of which Upaya is a part.

With the eyes of our hearts watching the violence in Burma and other parts of the world, we pray for peace, and we take up peacemaking, in its many forms, as our practice. In the writings of Zen Peacemaker teachers herein, we are reminded that there are so many ways to bear witness.

Today, we are also celebrating the birthday of our dear Roshi Joan, with so much gratitude for the way of courage and peace she has inspired through her life, work, and teachings, embodied here at Upaya. May she have a long, long healthy life.

Áine McCarthy, Editor

THIS MONTH AT UPAYA

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Dharma Talk, Daily Practice

Photo of Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi

DHARMA TALK — July 31

Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi, The Origin of the Heart Sutra

DAILY PRACTICE

7:00 am, 12:20 pm (see exceptions below) and 5:30 pm.Please arrive 5 minutes early for sitting periods and events. Park in the East parking lot (2nd driveway — the one farther from town).

Gratitude to Roshi Joan

Today is Roshi's 71st Birthday.

For nearly thirty five years, Roshi has lived in a community of practice. We are grateful that she founded Upaya, and that her work continues to address the truth of suffering and freedom from suffering.

As the roots of practice grow deep in the earth of this beautiful place we call Upaya, Roshi Joan asks that you consider spending July 30, her birthday, in a practice of compassion, either on your cushion or directly serving others in a hospice, a prison, a school, in your home, your neighborhood, or your mountaintop. "The world needs you," she says, "it needs you free of pretense; it needs you as you are; it needs you brave and loving." So she asks you to turn toward the world, directly or indirectly, on this summer day, and as Zen Master Dogen said: "Give life to life..." Or as Roshi Joan says: "Show up..."

And if you are so inclined, continue the tradition that we started years ago to honor Roshi. In lieu of personal presents, please consider giving to Upaya. There are many ways to support the wonderful efforts underway here:

You may also contact Upaya's Business Manager, Ellen at 505-986-8518 x16, or send a check to:

Upaya Zen Center 1404 Cerro Gordo Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87501

We thank you for your kindness and generosity.

And we thank Roshi Joan for all she has given to the world... Happy Birthday, Roshi!

May all beings be free from suffering

May all beings be free from the causes of suffering

May all beings be safe

May all beings be peaceful...

ROSHI JOAN: News, Teachings, Travels

Photo of Roshi Joan at Prajna Mountain Buddhist Refuge

Roshi will mark her birthday in retreat at the Refuge. She returns to Upaya on July 31 for a birthday with the community, and then makes her way back to the mountains for a few days before coming down for Upaya's chaplaincy training with Fleet Maull, Alan Senauke, Cheri Maples, Bernie Glassman, a very rich time of learning and service for her.

All is very vibrant at Upaya at this time, and there is a lot of gratitude for our local sangha and residents who keep the practice stream flowing.

Roshi has produced a new book of photos for Upaya's Mountain Members. This beautiful book is called: GOING BEYOND. Mountain Members will receive a signed copy in thanks for their membership: http://www.upaya.org/membership/

We are accepting applications for Upaya's resident program. Please consider joining Roshi, Visiting Teachers, and Upaya for three months or more of dedicated practice and learning. By application, click here.

Roshi as well has a number of papers she has written on compassion. If you wish to receive a copy, please write the office: upaya@upaya.org

For several new videos of interviews with Roshi Joan on Upaya's Blog, click here.

Roshi Joan started a Google+ Community and more than 1400 people have joined so far. Click here to join.

Upaya is guided by a series of remarkable Visiting Teachers. We are grateful for Sensei Robert Thomas (Nov 2013), Sensei Irene Bakker (Jul/Aug 2013), Roshi Eido Frances Carney (Sep 2013). Also, we are happy that Sensei Alan Senauke is now a Core Teacher for our Chaplaincy Training and will be a Visiting Teacher in spring, 2014. Note that Roshi Norman Fischer will be leading Upaya's Summer Ango in 2014 and Sensei Robert Thomas will be leading spring sesshin, 2014 and will be a Visiting Teacher in fall 2014.

Roshi now has five new books available for sale at Upaya: Four are photography books — "Seeing Inside," "About Face," "Original Face: Unmediated Expressions of Tibet, Nepal, Burma," and "Leaning into the Light." "Lone Mallard" is a book of her haiku. In addition, over a hundred of her remarkable photos are available to look at (and purchase) on Upaya's website:https://www.upaya.org/seeing-inside/

Photo of Roshi Joan with INEB founder Sulak Sivaraksa.

The Buddha, some 2500 years ago, was involved in social revolution, from ordaining untouchables, a serial killer, and women, to flattening out the social system by not re-creating the caste system in the monastic body.

He washed the wounds of a monk, dealt with complex sangha organizational politics, was advisor to kings, and taught the poor. He was also a monastic who had been married, had a son, and chose to leave a backwater village to engage in a mental experiment that led to insights about how the human mind is structured and can be trained to transform suffering, both personal and social, into compassion and wisdom. He also taught human kindness, even as he faced the winds of war.

Several hundred years after the Buddha's death, the emperor Ashoka, after going through a powerful inner transformation, helped not only spread Buddhism across Asia and made Buddhism a world religion, but he established vegetarianism, veterinary clinics, banned hunting, and created social and environmental policies that protected humans as well as animals and the earth.

in the light of this, engaged Buddhism cannot be seen as a recent development but of having its roots deep in the history of Buddha himself.

A simple recent example can be shared regarding an experience I had in Tibet, thanks to Matthieu Ricard and Raphaele Demandre. When I was in very remote Dzongsar monastery in Kham (eastern Tibet), our clinicians from the Nomads Clinic served in a clinic in the monastery that treated the local people (men, women, children) and manufactured Tibetan medicine for the amchis (traditional doctors) of the region. This along with the monastic practices and training is typical for monasteries such as this. I saw the same in a Bon monastery in far western Tibet, and observed similar situations in Mustang and Humla.

With this in mind, I conclude that there is not a split between the contemplative and applied in Buddhism. I would propose quite the opposite, that, from the Buddhist perspective, compassion is interdependent with wisdom, and that this view is held throughout much of the Buddhist world, and that applied principled compassion is more the case than not.

I look on my work in the prison system, with clinicians and dying people, and the environment, as simply a contemporary expression of what has long been a golden thread in the fabric of Buddhism. I also do not idealize Buddhism in this regard. There are sufficient examples of deluded Buddhism to fill volumes. This is true for all systems and institutions. However, the Bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayana stream is an archetypal manifestation of compassion in action, and there are many contemporary initiatives and individuals who endeavor to actualize the spirit of the compassionate Buddha in great and intimate ways. Most of us who are associated with this stream are primed by the same aspiration whether we are sitting on our cushion, at our desk, at the bedside, or across from a prisoner. We need be reminded that this integrated approach is simply a continuation of the origins of our practice.

We are here at the Dialog Center in Oswiecim, Poland just ending the first day of the 18th Zen Peacemaker Auschwitz-Birkenau Bearing Witness Retreat, 110 peacemakers from many countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Native People, Poles, Germans, Israelis, Palestinians, Rwandans, Belgians, French, Italians, Americans, Dutch, British and Canadians.

We left Krakow early in the morning by bus for the 1.5 hour trip to Oswiecim and arrived directly at Auschwitz I, plunging immediately into the retreat with a ceremony inside the gas chamber at Auschwitz I. Later in the day sitting in our large circle for orientation and introductions here at the Dialog Center where we are staying, I was awestruck by the presence of all these brave people from around the world. This is my 12th time here on the Auschwitz retreat, but it may as well be the first. The reality of this place is never manageable and my fellow retreatants are all here in this place, now. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to serve in this way. Tomorrow, after our morning council groups and breakfast, we go to Birkenau where most of our retreat will take place these next four days. Just writing the name, Birkenau, plunges me into unimaginable pain, grief, sadness, anger and confusion. Time to take a deep breath … May all beings be free of suffering, May all beings be happy!

Zen Peacemaker Auschwitz Bearing Witness Retreat Day 2

We began our day at the Northeast entrance to Birkenau and walked along the northern perimeter of this infamous death camp to the Sauna, the rather strange name for the place where prisoners not sent to the gas chambers were processed into the slave labor camp. It was raining and very cold as 110 of us walk in smaller groups with our guides explaining the details of this vast death camp, which was intended to expand to become a death city for extermination of all Slavic people and others considered non-Aryan by the Nazis. The rain finally stopped in the afternoon, allowing us to set up our usual meditation and reading of the names circle at the “selection site” between the two rail-heads at Birkenau. It was bitter cold and windy as we sat through alternating periods of silence and reading the names of the victims. For me the challenging conditions help me connect to the horrors of this place. It actually feels weird to me being here when the weather is more comfortable. This evening we visited "The Labyrinth," the exhibition of Marian Kołodziej’s amazing artistic expression of the hell realm that was Auschwitz, for me the most powerful expression of hell and of the dark side of our human experience I’ve ever seen. Marian was a close friend of the Zen Peacemakers, we visited with him every year and he joined us to sit at the selection site every year. Marian died in 2009. His amazing wife, Harina, joined us this evening patiently answering our questions late into the evening after we had toured the extensive installation of Marian’s work. Tomorrow, after our morning council groups, we return to Birkenau to continue bearing witness to the inexplicable, the horrific and to our humanity, the light and the darkness.

Zen Peacemaker Auschwitz Bearing Witness Retreat Day 3

It was another tough, bitterly cold and wet day for the 110 of us bearing witness to the horrors of genocide at Birkenau. I found myself moving back and forth between intense awareness of my own physical challenge with the cold and the equally intense awareness of the voices and visions that permeate the grounds of Birkenau. Listening to my fellow peacemakers reading the names of the victims at the selection site as they stood shivering in the freezing cold and biting wind inspired me greatly. Hearing our Palestinian friends read the names of Jewish victims of the holocaust gave me great hope. Just a little while ago I finished leading a shadow (surfacing the shadow or unspoken) council in spiral format (people coming in and out of the inner council circle surrounded by concentric witnessing circles) with our whole group of 110 peacemakers. When I listed the countries in my first post, I neglected to mention Australia and New Zealand. Tonight we heard from a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, from Palestinians, Israelis, a German with a Nazi grandfather, and a Swedish man who lost all four grandparents to the holocaust. More than 30 people in all shared during the spiral council. It was edgy and at one point two people walked out, angry or offended. This is edgy work.

Peacemaking is not all love and light, obviously.

We are working with deeply conditioned and shared archetypes of enemy, of perpetrator and victim, of good and evil, and of rescuers and silent heroes. Hearing all the voices can be painful and disconcerting. I’m very grateful for this practice and retreat and for all of our courageous peacemakers including those who needed to leave the circle this evening.

May all beings be free of suffering,May all beings have the courage to bear witness to their own and others' suffering and beautyMay all beings find peaceMay we all be peace.

Click here to see images from Marian Kolodziej's Auschwitz exhibit, "The Labyrinth"

There are No Words: Roshi Bernie Glassman

Join us at Upaya August 16-18, for BEARING WITNESS TO THE ONENESS OF LIFE with Roshi Bernie Glassman. click here.__________

In a moving personal essay, Roshi Bernard Glassman discusses his practice of bereavement following the death of his wife and dharma partner, Sensei Sandra Jishu Holmes.

I follow a daily schedule. In the mornings I take a bath. Then I sit in front of my wife's picture. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I look at the birds outside. I read and re-read the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, whom she admired. I play with her dogs. I read her journals.

During the rest of the day I work on the formation of the Peacemaker Order and develop its web site. I'm available to teachers and senior students, usually by phone. I sometimes laugh and say that in comparison to the way I've worked over the past thirty years, I'm not doing anything. But when the sun goes down I'm exhausted and I go to bed early. For I'm actually working very hard. I'm bearing witness.

In March, 1998 my wife, Sensei Jishu Angyo Holmes, and I left our home in Yonkers to move to Santa Fe. We were accompanied by three associates and four dogs. We drove two cars and two trucks across the country, pausing for six hours in Pennsylvania to fix an oil leak in one of the trucks and for three hours at the Federal Penitentiary in Springfield, Missouri, to visit one of our Peacemaker priests, Fleet Maull.

Jishu and I had worked in the inner city of Yonkers since 1982, from the beginning of the Greyston Bakery. We lived in Yonkers since 1987, all that time focusing our energies on developing the Greyston Mandala, a group of organizations which built housing and provided jobs for homeless families and people with HIV/AIDS in Yonkers.

But once we'd co-founded the Zen Peacemaker Order in 1996, we began to look elsewhere for a place to live. We were on the road half the time, visiting ZPO sanghas and peacemaker groups all over the world, and we were getting older. The idea of a refuge, a sanctuary where we could both breathe and rest between trips and engagements, became very important.

Finally, last December, Jishu saw a house in Santa Fe. It was a square adobe home with an inner courtyard, hacienda-style, perched over the Santa Fe River. It needed to be rewired and replastered. It needed new windows, doors, and bathrooms. She loved it. We would live in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. There would be room for her dogs, for new trees, for a big garden. She invited her parents to move down so that she could live close to them. It would be the start of a new life, for her and for me.

On Tuesday evening, March 3, we left Yonkers. Jushin, our housekeeper and a student of Jishu, took a picture of her teacher smiling through the window of one of our giant trucks just before we pulled out. It was the last photo taken of her alive.

We arrived in Santa Fe on Monday morning, March 9, and closed on our new house. Six days later, in the midst of unpacking on a Sunday afternoon, Jishu complained of chest pains. She was rushed to the hospital; the doctors said she'd had a heart attack.

For four days she seemed to be getting better and stronger. But on Thursday night she had a second attack, and after struggling for almost twenty-four hours, she passed from this sphere of teaching late on the evening of March 20, the day of the spring solstice. She was several days shy of her fifty-seventh birthday.

A week later we held her funeral. We brought her back to the home she'd loved and hardly lived in, bathed and dressed her in her bedroom, then laid her out to rest in the canopied inner courtyard. We kept her company all night and in the morning returned her to the funeral home. There we talked about our life with Jishu. Her mother talked about her when she was a child, while her brothers talked about how they'd grown up together. I was the last.

When it was my time to speak I looked at her as she lay in her casket, draped in the kesa she had sewed, wearing her mala and a beautiful Hawaiian lei, and said, "There are no words." It was all I could say. Then we covered her entire body with flowers, hundreds of flowers, and sent her to her fire samadhi.

In the afternoon we planted a plum tree in the yard so that birds could nestle in its branches and the dogs lie in its shade. Then we went and brought her relics home. They lie beneath her photo in the living room across from the altar where she did her Zen and Tibetan Buddhist practices every morning. She's always in the house. In fact, I call the house Casa Jishu.

At first I was in shock. We had just come here to begin a new life in a place she loved. Our bedroom looked out at the mountains and she had loved to wake up to the dawn each morning. She was full of joy and exuberance when we'd arrived here. But all she had been given was five dawns. A week after Jishu's death an advance copy of my new book, Bearing Witness, arrived. In it I had written about the three tenets of the Zen Peacemaker Order: not-knowing, bearing witness to joy and suffering, and healing ourselves and others. As I looked over the book, I realized what the shock had done for me. I was in a state of not-knowing.

What had happened was inconceivable, unthinkable. Most people couldn't believe it. Over and over, people talked about Jishu's lighthearted, happy smile, a smile that none of us was going to see again. What are you going to do? they asked me. I'm going to bear witness, I replied. I cancelled my schedule of public appearances for the rest of the year, including a book tour. I put off hundreds of friends, associates and students who called or wished to fly over. I knew from the beginning how easy it would be for a man like me, surrounded by people and programs and plans, with schedules finalized two years in advance, to throw himself into his work. Instead I chose to do a plunge. I chose to plunge into Jishu.

Plunges are trademarks of our order. They're retreats designed to jar us out of our usual way of doing things, out of our usual concepts, and we bear witness. I have done plunges on the Bowery of New York City for many years; I have done plunges at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. This is my hardest plunge of all.

This is the schedule I follow for my plunge. I get up early and take a bath. I learned about baths from Jishu, who found them a wonderful way to relax. Then I sit in front of her picture in the living room. Sometimes I put on music, especially Mahler's Fourth Symphony, which she loved. Sometimes it ís Philip Glass. Sometimes it's Shlomo Karlbach, the singing rabbi and an old friend, who sang songs to the daughter he named Neshama-my soul.

Recently I've been putting our tapes and CDs in order. Jishu started doing that back in Yonkers, arranging the music by composers in their respective centuries. I just finished the job. The birds are singing outside the window. She loved birds, and before joining the Zen Community of New York had gone on birding expeditions around the world. So her bird books and binoculars are close at hand, so that I can look at the birds that she loved. She also loved doing jigsaw puzzles, the bigger the better. So there's a jigsaw puzzle out on the round table by the cushion where I sit. The pieces are in disarray. That way, whenever people come in they can find a piece that fits and put it in the puzzle. It'll take a while to finish, but there's no hurry.

In the beginning I wasn't sure I could do this. In the spring, purple and white lilacs blossomed so profusely that they appeared inside our windows and doors, their smell overpowering the incense I light in the mornings. Hummingbirds looked through the window, the trees sprouted leaves, the twilights were longer and golden. It seemed as if I was surrounded by the things that Jishu loved. I couldn't look anywhere without thinking of how she would have loved to see this, how she would have exclaimed over that. Instead I watched the hummingbirds, I sniffed the flowers, and I didn't want to. I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave the house, leave Santa Fe.

This is not my kind of place, I told people, we came to the Southwest for Jishu's sake. This house, the canyon, the mountains-these are the things that she loved, not me. I'm more comfortable in the inner city, not here. I talked about selling the house, leaving, and getting myself a studio in the Bowery.

And in fact a buyer for the house came quickly forward, a neighboring family I had just met and liked. They would take care of the house, they promised. They would take care of it for Jishu. But I've stayed. So far I haven't left. So far I haven't sold. Letters are lying on my desk, offers of homes where I can rest and get away from it all: Malibu, New York City, Santa Barbara, Hawaii, London, Switzerland. So far I haven't left Santa Fe, except on two occasions.

In early June I went to Philadelphia to install a group of students into the Zen Peacemaker Order as Buddhists. They had begun their studies with Jishu and I installed them in her name. The other was when I visited San Francisco to see Ram Dass. Some time ago R.D. had suffered a terrible loss, too, a major stroke that had left his right side completely paralyzed. Jishu had also suffered such a stroke in 1994, only she had recovered most of her powers. I could have talked to R.D. on the phone, but I needed to do it face to face.

So I visited him at his home and we talked quietly. And as we talked I began to realize what was happening from my bearing witness, from my grief for Jishu. She was integrating with me. I was becoming Jishu-Bernie. When she was still alive, Jishu had brought into our relationship certain energies that lay dormant in me. She had brought her softness, her femininity, her down-to-earth practicality and deep empathy into our life together. Now, with her death, I either had to manifest them myself or watch them disappear from my life. Jishu was not the only one to die on that first day of spring. Bernie died, too.

Someone else is now emerging, someone else is coming to life. For lack of a name, I call that person Jishu-Bernie. That new human being is unfolding. I still don't know who that person is or what that person will do. There are many things I still don't know. The third tenet of the Zen Peacemaker Order is healing ourselves and others. But often I think that what's really happening is more basic than that. When we don't know-when we let go and sit with shock, pain and loss, with no answers, solutions or ideas, with nothing at hand but this moment, this pain, this grief, this absence-then out of that something arises. And what arises is love. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to create anything. Love arises by itself. It's been there all the time, and now, when I'm less protected than at any other moment in my life, it's there.

People ask me every day how I'm doing. I don't know how to answer them; there are no words. So I just tell them I'm bearing witness. It must be hard, they say. No. But isn't it sad? they ask. Isn't it painful? No, I say. It's raw, that's all. It's bearing witness, and the state of bearing witness is the state of love.

Jishu continues to lie in peace in her home, by candlelight that is never extinguished. At some point I will build a stupa by the plum tree and her relics will go there. At some point I may travel again; I may appear in public again. Right now I don't know who that "I" will be. Jishu kept a journal for many years. When I get low it helps me to read it. On December 23, 1992, two days before Christmas, she wrote the following: "I have reached a crossroads. The old ways of being don't work anymore. I can't just `do' anymore. God has taken away my capacity for that. I am in a state of not-knowing: not-knowing who I am, what my values are, what my goals are, how I will get along, what will become of me. It's frightening and at the same time I feel hopeful."

And on April 9, 1995, she wrote this: "I want results instead of process. What a trap. As I create and listen, I will be led. As I create and listen, I will be led. As I create and listen, I will be led. The process takes care of itself. Just listen. As I create and listen, I will be led."

GET INVOLVED!

Program Change Announcement - Social Resilience Model (SRM) Training, Levels I and II

Due to the interest expressed in the SOCIAL RESILIENCE MODEL (SRM) Training Level l, we are offering it in August, 2013 and reschedule the SRM Training Level ll for 2014.

SRM Training I teaches all eight skills, including the 6 skills for use in self-care. The application of these skills not only can serve your patients, clients, friends and family members but, most importantly, fortify your resiliency zone by prioritizing your own self-care.

These talks, given by extraordinary Buddhist teachers such as Roshi Joan Halifax, Sharon Salzberg, Bernie Glassman, and many more, are offered to support your practice even if you live far away from Upaya.

Apps Available Now: Did you know you can have Upaya's dharma talks delivered directly to your mobile phone or MP3 player?

iPhone and iPod users, just use iTunes to subscribe to our free podcast here.

Upaya's Nepal Nomads Clinic: Compassion in the Mountains

Roshi Joan Halifax, Tenzin Norbu, and Carroll Dunham will be returning to Nepal Sep 23. The 2014 journey and Clinic are in a planning process. Contact Upaya if you are interested. Please support. Check out new website for stories from our medical pilgrimages (link below).__________

Every year (since the early eighties), Roshi Joan goes with clinicians and friends to the Himalayas with the Nomads Clinic. We invite you to join us in supporting this wonderful work. And great thanks to Chas Curtis, Cira Crowell, and Canton Becker for putting together this wonderful website!:http://nomadsclinic.org/

Santa Fe Sangha Events

THURSDAYS (most), 9:20 am: Weekly Seminar, Upaya House living room — open to the public. Topic is usually related to the dharma talk of the evening before. To confirm that the seminar is happening that morning, please email temple@upaya.org.

Zen Meditation Instruction:Sunday, August 4th at 3 pm. Come for instruction and Q&A about the basics of Zen meditation (zazen). Everyone is welcome!

Calgary, AB, Canada: Calgary Contemplative End of Life Care Practice Group. For professionals and volunteers working with people who are dying. Second Monday each month at Hospice Calgary's Sage Center, 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Sit starts at 7 pm. For further information, contact laurie.lemieux@hospicecalgary.com